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Professor_Quail writes with this interesting excerpt: "Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world's most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminum' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion."

This is a great breakthrough. This means that we can now wear full face tinfoil hats for even more protection without risking to bump into something anymore. Thanks that tinfoil hats are actually made of aluminum nowadays !;-))

So why was he so good with it? Punch cards are quaint from my perspective but I wouldn't know where to start with them. Is he also proficient with using a morse code transmitter?

Maybe using an "old style" keyboard had become something of a game, something that engineering students would compete on to prove they were hard core.

Or maybe, just maybe, it is only a piece of entertainment. If you are going to fail to suspend disbelief at the moment Scotty is able to use a keyboard proficiently how did you get through the previous scenes like the time travel thing, the whales communicating with aliens, and so on.

In the same way the Russians still use thermionic valves for aircraft and spacecraft, and indeed high-end audiophiles use them for sound systems, there may be contexts in 25th century engineering where a mechanical keyboard is safer/superior to a touchscreen panel. In that case, Scotty would certainly have needed to be proficient with them.

In the same way the Russians still use thermionic valves for aircraft and spacecraft, and indeed high-end audiophiles use them for sound systems, there may be contexts in 25th century engineering where a mechanical keyboard is safer/superior to a touchscreen panel.

You're overthinking this. There would still be needs to input text manually in certain situations. They do use touchscreens... why wouldn't QWERTY have survived on a touch surface? The difference doesn't need to be as exotic as telegraph to telephone; it might just be manual typewriter to electric typewriter.

Or maybe there won't be a massive revolution in input methods in the next few hundred years, so even with touch screens, you're still entering text using small squares with letters on them. The only replacement I can think of would be a wire sticking into your brain, since even flawless voice recognition wouldn't work too well in rooms with multiple people working at the same time.

Maybe using an "old style" keyboard had become something of a game, something that engineering students would compete on to prove they were hard core.

Or maybe, just maybe, it is only a piece of entertainment. If you are going to fail to suspend disbelief at the moment Scotty is able to use a keyboard proficiently how did you get through the previous scenes like the time travel thing, the whales communicating with aliens, and so on.

Actually, I think it's more (as I heard before) that it's OK to expect audiences to believe the impossible, but not the improbable. So it's fine that the crew of the Enterprise just time-travelled back to 1986 on a Bird of Prey, but it's not fine that a 23rd century engineer is able to touch type and operate a mid-80s Mac like he'd done this all his life.

It may not be completely logical, but since when is the human mind completely logical?

I find his expertise with a keyboard a bit unlikely, though perhaps plausible.

What I find *totally* laughable is not that he type like a daemon, but that he not only knows a 20th-century (hundreds of years old, to him) CAD program, he knows it so well that he even has all the keyboard shortcuts memorized and can create a highly complex engineering document without even touching the mouse. In about 30 seconds.

So why was he so good with it? Punch cards are quaint from my perspective but I wouldn't know where to start with them.

Think of it as in-depth engineering. Some of us can handle WIMPy interfaces and languages (AJAX should be a swear word), but still be proficient with earlier generations of technology. I've used vast quantities of punched cards (mostly FORTRAN-66 garnished with IBM JCL), and miles of paper tape (yay PDP-8/e). And if you're really interested, I can send and receive both Morse and semaphore - the real kind of semaphore where you hold flags in your hands. Never learned much beyond basics in smoke signals, however.

Go back and watch the scene again when you have a chance. He's learning how to type as he goes - he gets faster and faster as the scene progresses. You might not know where to start with punch cards, but they still speak and write English in Star Trek, and keyboards are conveniently labeled.

So why was he so good with it? Punch cards are quaint from my perspective but I wouldn't know where to start with them. Is he also proficient with using a morse code transmitter?

Because he's Scotty. He's bad ass!

Don't you watch the show?

P.S., yes, he is proficient in morse code. Even lowly captain picard knows how to write long instructions in binary!And we all know the engineers know waaaay more than the officers, in any time period:D

Tin foil hats are made from tin foil. If you're using aluminum foil, you're making an aluminum foil hat.

Incidentally, aluminum is not very effective at blocking the government's mind control rays. Why do you think they replaced tin foil with aluminum foil? Luckily I stocked up decades ago, but anyone who thinks aluminum foil will protect them is playing right into the government's hands.

But it's so simple. Only a great fool would reach for the tin foil hat. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose aluminum foil hat. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose tin foil hat.

I saw this at New Scientist [newscientist.com] yesterday and almost submitted it, until I actually read the article. The bombardment that makes it transparent only lasts for fractions of a nanosecond before the foil is comlpetely destroyed. A few commenters there pointed to some wikipedia articles with other transparent metals. One commenter said

I always thought the "transparent aluminum" of Startrek was a tongue-in-cheek thing - on the basis that it has existed both naturally and man-made for donkeys years. Ok, it is aluminium OXIDE (sapphire) instead of JUST aluminium - but it is transparent, incredibly strong, extremely hard and is made out of nowt more exotic than aluminium and oxygen.

Ruby the same of course but with a few chromium atoms bunged in for good measure and a nice red tint.

Aluminium oxynitride (AlON) is a transparent ceramic composed of aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen. It is marketed under the name ALON and described in U.S. Patent 4,520,116. The material remains solid up to 1,200 C (2,190 F), and is harder than glass. When formed and polished as a window, the material currently (2005) costs about US$10 to US$15 per square inch (~ US$20,000/m).

It is currently the crucial outer layer of experimental transparent armor being considered by the US Air Force for the windows of armored vehicles. Other applications include semiconductors and retail fixtures.

Most ceramic materials, such as alumina and its compounds, are formed from fine powders, yielding a fine grained polycrystalline microstructure which is filled with scattering centers comparable to the wavelength of visible light. Thus, they are generally opaque materials, as opposed to transparent materials. Recent nanoscale technology has, however, made possible the production of polycrystalline transparent ceramics such as transparent alumina.

The value of the work described in TFA isn't that they made transparent aluminum, but

for an instant, Wark and his team can create a new state of matter that is as dense as ordinary solid matter, but extremely hot. "That is the sort of matter you would get towards the centre of a giant planet," says Wark.

The team hopes to study the properties of this hot, dense matter using new, more powerful lasers such as the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford, California. These lasers produce higher-energy X-rays that could probe the structure of the new material and measure its properties - perhaps providing some insight into the heart of Jupiter and the other giant planets.

If I got TFA right, it's only transparent to ultraviolets, through a tiny hole, and for a few femtoseconds. I'm sure it's great news but it's a bit over my head, and it's definitely nothing as cool as I was picturing.

Typically, in research, the first hurdle is to get a repeatable and reliable test case that has almost no practical use (ala this situation). Once they accomplish that hurdle (also sometimes referred to as proof of concept) they can proceed to make it last longer (e.g. make it permenant), make it work better (e.g. invisible to the visible spectrum), make it cheaper for mass production (e.g. so we can build large versions of these) and then continue other improvements.

Basically this was a HUGE hurdle - they were able to show this is possible. Now they will get more funding and they can continue...hopefully we will see (or in this case not see) invisible alumnimum in the future and eventually other items.

BTW - similar systems (recent article) was the Green diode laser. Now with green diode lasers we will eventually have TVs using lasers to draw our images.

I would say that a microscopic hole that is transparent for a few femtoseconds to a small slice of the magnetic spectrum is more of a proof of potential possibility than a proof of concept of what the phrase "transparent aluminum" brings to mind.

See, your comment is a perfect example of the cancer that is "science" journalism. This experimental result is in no way something that could ever be made into windows or body armour. This was a misconception due to certain words (like transparent) having rigorous meanings in the scientific community.

A suitable analogy: Journalist reads wikipedia page on the stanford Z-Machine, sees "wires move fast". Could this be the next step in automatic cheese-slicing technology? No.

This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period - an estimated 40 femtoseconds - it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.

So this doesn't quite have as broad a nerd appeal as the summary would lead us to believe.

Very temporary. I think the biggest thing here is what the researchers speculate can be done with this. I submitted a story [slashdot.org] after this guy but I'll just past the firehose here because I'm lazy:

Star Trek's transparent aluminum [slashdot.org] has already been realized [slashdot.org] by heating aluminum but Oxford scientists claim to have found a new state of matter [ox.ac.uk] while making transparent aluminum. The laser in use is the FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany and each brief pulse of X-Ray energy it releases is 'more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.' Although the new state only lasts about 40 femtoseconds, Oxford Professor Justin Wark has high hopes for this research, "Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth."

I think they're excited about the strange fusion capabilities this new state may allow them to harness. Nothing conclusive yet though.

Nothing in the article makes it sound very transparent in the way we'd imagine transparency. Extreme ultra-violet? Maybe, but it sure looks from the image like that transparent aluminium is at best translucent for visible spectrum light -- look at how much that laser is diffused.

I remember watching years ago (early 90's?) on PBS some show (NOVA or similar) where researchers were growing rubies in a bowl of "ruby soup" with a shard of a ruby as a starter, uh, crystal I guess. Apparently you would pop this recipe in the microwave for a half hour or so on low power and end up with a a chunk of material you could break up and grind down into a couple of 1 carat "rubies". The voiceover said they couldn't give away the recipe since it would tank the ruby market. I've googled for this mag

My guess would be that the recipe is based on Aluminum Hydroxide [wikipedia.org]. It melts at the fairly modest temperature of 300C and can be dissolved in acidic or strongly basic solutions. Because it is basically hydrated alumina (it's sometimes called that) it's not too hard to believe that with the right additives you could have the alumina 'condense' on to a seed crystal. For color, you'll probably also want to add chromium hydroxide.

Aluminum oxide (corundum) is a ceramic (as are all glasses) and is rather brittle. It doesn't have the malleability, ductility, and fracture toughness (plastic deformation beyond the yield strength instead of complete failure) which makes metals a desirable structural material. Currently, when we need a transparent material with these properties we use plastics, but they tend to be lower strength and much more flexible (bendy) than metals. A transparent metal would be awesome because it could serve the same function with less volume of material and less need for structural stiffening.

Two different technologies to create two different materials that happen to share the same description. The 2004 story you linked to is about a product that is in production, with real world tangible benefits, and is actually transparent in the visual spectrum. The one in the current story can't claim any of that.

This does not mean this process can be used to make transparent armor or other applications for super-strong glass. The article states that the x-rays wereï focused to a spot with a diameter smaller than a human hair's, the aluminum was transparent to ultraviolet, and the state lasted 40 femtoseconds. Details left out of the summary.

Nonetheless, this is incredibly cool. The new state of matter that is being boasted about is one where a non-valent electron is removed from atoms. Very cool.

This would be amazing in military applications and other defense applications. Watching the movie The Hurt Locker last night one of the guys (in the hum-v) was manning the machine gun. The top 1/3 of his body is exposed on the top of the hum-v which makes him prime pickings for incoming fire. If I was him I would want some defensive there - even very thick plexiglass (lined with metal wires)...given that is not available, this could do the trick. It may not block everything but

Or, you know, instead of exotic material solutions, we could simply build a remote control rig in the vehicle. Why add weight and high costs (soft X-Ray treatment,sound expensive!) to the vehicle? Let the soldier direct the gun from the inside the safety of the vehicle with a hardwired joystick and some cameras.

While i am down for technology control - i have to say seeing something on a tv screen is not as good as seeing it from your own eyes. Plus if that technology breaks you are screwed though if you die you are more screwed...

short pulse from the FLASH laser 'knocked out' a core electron from every aluminum atom in a sample without disrupting the metal's crystalline structure. This turned the aluminum nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation...."Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period - an estimated 40 femtoseconds..."

OK. so they took a really powerful soft X-ray pulse source and hammered an electron out of most of the atoms in a sample of aluminum. In 40 femtoseconds (!) the electrons were replaced, but for a brief period,
the material would pass "extreme ultraviolet radiation". This isn't a "new material"; it's an old material in a very transient state. They were able to do this without blasting the aluminum apart, which is the new result. On the other hand, metals can be forced into electron-deprived states without too much trouble. Ordinary vacuum tubes do this.

The terminology here is puzzling. "Extreme ultraviolet radiation" and "soft X-rays" are in the same part of the spectrum. Does this mean that after being zapped with the giant X-ray pulse, some of the soft X-rays made it through? Or did they have two different illumination sources?

It doesn't say, but the FLASH laser is a free-electron laser, which as I understand it is continuously tunable, see here [wikipedia.org]. The FLASH wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] says it it is tunable from 10 to 200 nm, which includes both SX and EUV parts of the spectrum.

The only reason that the aluminum needed to be 'transparent' was so that the camera could show that 'there be whales here.' I'm sure the whales didn't care. All they got was a view of the inside of a Klingon Bird of Prey. Yay.:-|

In this week's Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser 'knocked out' a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metal's crystalline structure.

First we get a story about green lasers. Then something about security problems with Flash.

''What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,'"

How is this statement justified? So far, all I hear is "I pissed on a rock and it turned to mud - it's a new state of matter!"

Actually. if you think about their statement "created...new state of matter nobody has seen before"...give it's in the ultraviolet spectrum, and in that spectrum it is invisible...nobody has yet to see it.

The last time I checked, the colloquail definition of "transparent" means "passes visible light".Glad to know those scientists can see in the UV range - sounds like evolution is moving apace.

UV light borders the "visible light" spectrum (much like IR light does), and any material that blocks one of those ranges almost always blocks the others. Transparency in a normally non-transparent material in any one of these ranges is important for 3 reasons:

The general "visible light spectrum" term is based on the average human eye. Some animals see into the UV or IR. We can also make cameras that can pick up in the UV/IR ranges. A state of UV-only transparency would have many applications that this could be used for:

The obvious one is use in the security/spying industry. Place a UV camera behind something like this - nobody can see the camera, and might not have any idea it's even there if the material flows naturally into the design of the walls/whatever.

There are excellent applications for military/safety - a one-way mirror, without the mirror, mixed with bulletproof glass? Modify some of the IR night-vision goggles to see UV instead, and you've got the perfect windows for tanks and other armored vehicles, shield walls for riot police, etc. Or mix cameras and projectors to display an overlay of what's happening on the other side of a wall - this would be excellent for military checkpoints, prisons, etc.

If we find ways of making a material transparent to one range, we are that much closer to expanding it to make the other ranges transparent, as well as figuring out how to make other materials transparent - and those might be transparent to the "visible light" spectrum as well.

If we can adapt this and find different materials that become transparent only to certain ranges of light, the uses start to increase greatly. There would be applications for everything from sculpture to architecture to gardening to sunbathing.